Many mobile devices comprise GPS receivers that receive signals from GPS satellites to ascertain the mobile device's location on Earth. Alternatively, mobile devices may be capable of receiving signals from other satellite-based systems such as GLONASS, Galileo and/or BeiDou, to determine the device's location.
Tracking the location of mobile devices such as mobile phones can also be can carried out using network-based methods. Mobile phones are operatively connected to communication networks through network radio towers. As is known in the art, the strength of the communication signals between radio towers and the mobile phone can be used to estimate the distance from the radio towers. As the radio towers are at fixed and known locations, the location of the mobile phone can be determined using a technique such as triangulation or multilateration.
Mobile devices comprising Wi-Fi modules can also be tracked using Wi-Fi, particularly indoors when GPS and network radio signals may be too weak to for the purposes of determining the location of the mobile device.
The location data of the mobile devices, including geographic coordinates and time at which the mobile device was at those geographic coordinates, may then be sent to a central system. Once a plurality of location data are received from each mobile device, analysis software operating on the central system can be used to determine the speed and direction of movement of the mobile device over time.
The speed of traffic flow on a road can be determined from the speed of movement of a plurality of mobile devices that are travelling along the road. The route taken and speed behaviour (e.g. typical speed achieved and stoppages) that a mobile device undergoes can be used to determine whether the mobile device is associated with a vehicle or a pedestrian.
Further analysis can be carried out on the mobile devices that are associated with vehicles, for example, to determine traffic flow information.
However, a problem in existing systems is that the traffic flow information that is generated is based on historic locations of the mobile devices and is inherently out of date. As traffic can build up or dissipate in the order of minutes, timely traffic reporting cannot be achieved with existing systems.
Further, the location data received from the mobile devices cannot be used to predict future traffic flow information as it is inherently out-of-date information. A solution to this problem is to estimate traffic conditions based on aggregating historic traffic flow as the same time of day in previous weeks.
Separately, displays for providing content (such as notice boards for information and billboards for advertisements) typically comprise static content, or at best displays that scroll through or present a series of repeating advertisements. As the displays may be viewed by a large volume of people, a limitation of such displays is that the content may only be directed to a particular demographic within the large volume of people. This means that the content display is not efficiently utilised as the content being provided may not be relevant to many viewers.
Accordingly, it is desired to address at least some of the above described problems.